Seminar 2【John-Dylan Haynes & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong】

Responsibility Without Freedom

Moderator: Kristina Krasich

[manelsalido]

The last minutes of John Dylan Haynes resume very well the problem of free will and the information of its inexistence to general public. Thanks very much.

[MyOwnSoundsPrivitera]

Thank you very much for the interesting discussions I am finding on this channel. I am not a researcher but I am highly interested in the topic.
I find it peculiar how the words used in different languages and cultures can help in shading light on the meaning of concepts.
Italians would not have any problem in telling the semantic difference between "free" used in the case of a "free coffee" and in the case of "free will". We would simply use two different terms. Specifically, we would use "gratis" for the first case and "libero" for the second one.
"Gratis" comes directly from the Latin "gratiis", ablative plural of "gratia" (meaning "grace", "benevolence"). Therefore, "un caffè gratis" (which translates as "a free coffee") is a coffee received, without payment, out of benevolence of the person that offered it.
"Libero", instead, is etymologically related to the Latin "libère", meaning '"to please" (someone). Therefore, the "free will" (which is translated in Italian as "libero arbitrio") is the will of someone who can unconstrainedly please himself/herself.
All this being said, I have the impression, by having viewed your videos and read several articles, that the discourse on responsibility seems to me too focussed on the individual. I mean, even if we can actually prove that one is unconstrainedly pursuing one's own goals and values when committing a crime, a serious discussion on how those goals and values came to be, as well as on the role of family and society in shaping them, is sorely needed.
Our judicial systems take the practical shortcut of taking into account just the very proximate causes as possible exculpatory circumstances, but it seems to me not so obvious that the distant causes that impinged on the value system of the individual should not have any bearing when judging responsibility.
I say right from the bat that I consider myself a hard determinist, and it is becoming increasingly salient to me that someone who grows up becoming a criminal is more unlucky than responsible, and, conversely, one that does not grow up becoming a criminal is more lucky than praiseworthy.
That does not imply that bad deeds should go unpunished. It implies that there are no bad people: just actions judged bad if compared with those actions that are conducive to a well functioning society. A very heinous crime is, in my view, simply an action that falls the furthest from those actions that one would expect to be performed in a well functioning society. However, since actions are performed by individuals, or by group of individuals, we are still forced to isolate the individual when he/she commits a crime. Nevertheless, reframing responsibility as a social problem allows us to maximise the likelihood of reintegrating the individual in the society and the likelihood of preventing crimes in the future.
PS: I know my position opens another discussion on ethics, but I am punting on it for the moment.